Friday, September 26, 2014

BlueSkiesResearch.org.uk: The future of climate science

I recently had the pleasure of a trip to Brussels, courtesy of this workshop, organised by Michel Crucifix, Valerio Lucarini and Stéphane Vannitsem. Titled "Advances in Climate Theory", it was a chance to discuss ideas related to…advances in climate theory, surprisingly enough. In practice, that included lots about the dynamics of the wiggles that are seen in paleoclimate cores (are they noise-induced or due to an inherent instability?), various nonlinearities, some entropy stuff which (deservedly?!) got a bit of rough ride from the audience. My talk was not so much on theory as practice, that is, the practical aspects of using the past to improve predictions of the future.

We were based in the Royal Meteorological Institute, which was a nice site some way out of town (walkable from the hotel, which was great apart from the day we had a brief downpour of biblical proportions just as I sneaked out a little bit early). Here is a picure of Michel orating on dynamical things…

It wasn’t all fun though – on my first night I had to forage on my own and only found some gueueuze for dinner, along with geueze-flavoured pate.